Memory Training with a World Record Holder: Part 2
Date Posted:
February 25, 2019
Date Recorded:
January 29, 2019
Speaker(s):
Dr. Boris Nikolai Konrad, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior
Description:
Boris Konrad, one of the world's top memory competitors and a PhD in Neuroscience, offered a unique workshop that transforms your memory in one day. During this five hour workshop, Boris takes you through classic "Method of Loci" memory training step by step until you have built up enough mental infrastructure to memorize, by yourself, fifty random items.
Boris Nikolai Konrad is a unique memory expert: A neuroscientist at Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, himself a World class memory athlete who set four Guinness World Records for memory as well as one of the best memory trainers in the world, known for his interactive keynotes and fascinating workshops he frequently gives for universities, companies and associations around the world. - https://linktr.ee/borisnikolaikonrad
BORIS KONRAD: So now I want to talk about this method of loci. Who has heard the term "method of loci" before? You don't need to be able to explain it, but who here has heard the term before? So six or seven-- maybe a quarter of you.
Who has heard the term "memory palace"? Memory palace? It's a few more, not that many more. So for me, the memory palace is more or less the same as the method of loci.
And the method of loci isn't exactly new. So if anyone tells you that I came up with it-- there's enough self-help books you can buy that claim that, more or less. That's total nonsense. It's actually a pretty old technique.
And pretty old means you find it back in ancient Greek texts. And they usually have a legend-- where does this technique come from? And let's say it was invented or found out, how you want to call it, by this guy. This is Simonides von Ceos. Simonides von Ceos lived around 500 before Christ, so that's some time ago.
Simonides lived 500 before Christ, and he was a politician, but also a public speaker-- rhetorician. So he was a politician, but you could also book him to give a speech for you. So if you think that's a concept Hillary Clinton invented, no, that was done 2,500 years ago as well.
So Simonides gave a lot of speeches. And one time, he was booked by an Olympic fighter-- you can say a boxer, you would say nowadays-- who was previously becoming famous and rich by fighting, by boxing. And when he was already retired, and gave a big festival, a banquette, for his 50th birthday. So he turned 50, gave a huge party, so to say. And he booked Simonides at the beginning of the evening to give his speech.
And Simonides did it, like you did it around the time, by making a lot of analogies, comparisons, with mythology, with mystic figures. And he compared this fighter with the two half-gods, Castor and Pollux, which should be a pretty good honor, to be compared to a half-god as a human.
However, this guy apparently was very-- how do you say that? Self-confident in maybe not a positive way, because at the end of the speech, he went to Simonides and said, well, thanks for coming. Here's half the money we agreed on. The other half you can take out from Castor and Pollux, about whom you talked half of the time anyway.
Simonides said, well, we'll deal with that later. For now, let's leave it at that. But the dinner was now brought in. They brought the dinner all the tables.
So Simonides ran from table to table to chat with everyone a little bit. And said, yeah, enjoy your meal. Did you like my speech? And just talked with everyone for a little bit, and ran from table to table to table.
And when he had run through the whole hall, back to the front, to the VIP table, probably, to take his own seat, someone serving at the event came and said, Simonides, there are two young men outside asking for you, if you could come outside for a moment. And he said, well, I don't expect anybody, but I'll have a look.
So you went outside to look for the two men, which is pictured here. And these two men, of course, were Castor and Pollux, which were not there literally, didn't pay him back in money, but paid him back by actually saving his life because when he was outside, an earthquake occurred. And it's what's seen in the back. Actually, a tragic event-- this hall collapsed. Actually, many people lost their lives.
Simonides then realized he could help. Maybe the-- what do you call it? Helping people, emergency troops, maybe also family members, by saying, well, I remember when I went offstage at the first tables, there was Mr. and Mrs. Whatever. And I don't see them around. So please look here.
There must be a couple over here. And at this table, there was Mr. So-and-so, so there should be someone over there. So he realized if he pictures in his mind walking off the stage, walking from table to table, he could tell people looking for others where there should be someone or other to identify. Many people did lose their lives and were hardly recognizable.
And much later, he started to think about it. He said, well, that there were people in the seats. That's kind of random. In my mind, I can place whatever I want on the seats, and later, find it back. That's how he came up with the method of loci, loci being then the Latin word for plural of locations. So that's the idea.
And we want to practice that quite extensively now because this is the technique enabling really massive gains. Like so when Robert mentions going from seven to 50 items, and it also helped me a lot, being a student, for all kinds of materials. We'll start simple, though, of course.
And we start with making a set of locations, where we don't have to move around for now along our human body. But before I want to do it, is I want to do one more warm-up exercise with you. And I want everyone to join in, now. So please will you join in?
And please picture you're standing outside your room, your apartment, your house. I don't know where you live. You're standing outside the front door or the entrance door to your room, to your apartment, to your house. And try to picture you open the door and look inside. Or just look like if you open your front door.
Some people closed the door right away. Not clean, ah! And now, of course, if I picture opening my front door, there's a clothes hanger on the left. And then there's this guest bathroom on the right with the toilet and the sink. And then I go into the living room, passing the fire pit, underneath the open staircase, to the West Wing, or something similar like that.
Now, what I want to show you is that, of course, you can picture your place. You know where you live. You know where the furniture is. You know maybe where the rooms are, where which major things are. You never memorized that on purpose. It's just what your brain is really good at.
I don't if you work in this building or somewhere else, if you're here often or not, but I'm here for the first time ever. And still, I didn't even pay attention to it on purpose when I went in. But if I now picture, well, I went in. I went in a thing on the back side. And then there was this little entrance. And there was, I remember, an Amazon board-- "Amazon, please don't leave stuff here. Bring it to the people. That's your job."
And then there's an elevator. And I went up to the elevator to the third floor. And there's this atrium. That's all in my mind. And it would be in your mind if you walked the same way for the first time because that's what our brain is so good at-- local information, imagery. And if you ever say you're the opposite to him, and it's hard for you to find paths, I guess in this example you could still picture your own apartment, and you also know how it looks like around here.
The fun thing is that we can use that-- maybe let's say utilize that-- to remember whatever we want. But let's start simple. Let's start with this body list. And we just need to break it up. Could you stand up for me? A little movement's always good. Could you stand up for me, please?
What I want you to do now is to remember a set of 10 locations along the human body. What do I mean with that? I will name 10 places, and your task is to remember them in order. So join me. And we start at the bottom. The feet are number one. The feet are number one.
And then the knees-- the knees are number two. Knees-- maybe do a little squat. Knees are number two. So thighs, the upper leg, that's number three. If you have trousers or jeans, the pocket of my trousers or my jeans, that's number three. My backside-- the backside is number four.
Can you please raise your hand? Please raise your hand. Your hand has five fingers. Can you put it on your belly, please? On your own belly? Thank you. So fifth location is the belly. If I'm not at five, it's the belly. I missed a location. I had one was the feet, two is the knees, three thigh, four backside, five belly.
Six is the chest. Seven-- shoulders. Eight-- throat. Nine-- mouth. And 10 are the eyes. Five was? Belly. Six-- chest. Seven-- shoulders. Eight-- throat. Nine-- mouth. 10 are the eyes. One more time. I want to hear you. Number one are the?
AUDIENCE: Feet.
BORIS KONRAD: Two?
AUDIENCE: Knees.
BORIS KONRAD: Three?
AUDIENCE: Thighs.
BORIS KONRAD: Four?
AUDIENCE: Backside.
BORIS KONRAD: Five?
AUDIENCE: Belly.
BORIS KONRAD: Six?
AUDIENCE: Chest.
BORIS KONRAD: Seven?
AUDIENCE: Shoulders.
BORIS KONRAD: Eight?
AUDIENCE: Throat.
BORIS KONRAD: Nine?
AUDIENCE: Mouth.
BORIS KONRAD: 10?
AUDIENCE: Eyes.
BORIS KONRAD: OK, thanks. You can have a seat. I'll have to say good job, well done. But everyone can do that, so that's why people love the job.
Why is it easy? Why was it no problem? It was 10 locations. That's more than seven. Well, I know how the body looks like, and that makes it so easy to name these locations.
So we now have these 10 locations. It wasn't the memory training that we memorized the locations, and so now, we're smarter. But the fun thing is what we now can do with it.
So I have 10 locations. And the order was simple because I know how the body looks like. So we use it right away. But two things to note, please-- two things to pay attention to.
Number one is the list is prepared. So sometimes, when people read books or just articles about it online somewhere about this technique and being a student, they think while I study material for my class, I have to come up with locations. Not true.
The locations are prepared. That's really important. So these are really fresh for you right now. Actually, the idea is to, of course, repeat the locations a few times, so when you actually use the locations to study something, to learn something, you have no problem at all thinking about the locations. That's really important.
And number two-- the locations define the order. We will now memorize 20 random words in order. 20 words, that's already quite a bit-- so, quite a jump from the eight we had before. Pretty hard if you don't have any technique. Don't know if anyone could have memorized 20 words in order if I just had given you a piece of paper this morning.
You already know, whatever the first two words are-- 20 words, two words, per location-- the first two words go to the feet. If the first word would have been glasses, I would think, oh, that fits nicely to the eyes. No, it has to go to the feet. But it's not glasses. The first words are a moss and a cow.
So how do I get that to my feet? Well, with imagery again-- with a small story. We're seeing something, experiencing something in your mind. So I want everyone to join in. Please join me in.
Picture maybe you took your shoes off, and you put the socks away, and you walk through a moss. Picture how it looks like in your head, but also how it feels-- maybe nice and squishy, but also really cold outside. But I walk through this moss.
And while I'm walking through the moss, I suddenly see a cow standing there, maybe chewing on the moss. So it's linked. So the cow isn't out of nowhere. It chews on the moss. So I walk through the moss. There's a cow standing there, chewing on it.
And from all the walking, I'm-- sorry, I get a little tired. So I'm lucky there's a tree stump or something. I sit down to rest a little bit. The moment I sit down, maybe the door opens again.
And this time, it's a queen walking in. And she takes a seat on my lap. But she's formal-- on the knees. That's totally crazy. Yes, it is. You're right. But you can picture it. Before I realize it, I maybe offer the queen the seat. Maybe from wherever, she takes a little bell and loudly rings a bell. For my knees, it's a queen ringing a bell.
And really try to hear it. Is it a little Christmas bell? Is it a church bell? Doesn't matter. What comes to your mind first, that's what it is. So on my knees, it's a queen. And she rings a bell.
What's the next location? Where do we go on?
AUDIENCE: Thighs.
BORIS KONRAD: Thigh, right. So picture your thigh, your upper leg. It's getting really warm-- really hot, actually. And you wonder why. What's happening? You grab your hand in your pocket of your trousers, and there's a light bulb in there--a light bulb.
And this light bulb is on. That's why it was getting so warm. It's on. How is it on? There is no socket here. There's no electricity. What's happening? And while you still look at it, a bull comes running towards you-- a bull-- and eats the light bulb. So in the pocket of the trousers, light bulb. The bull comes and eats it.
Next location is a?
AUDIENCE: Butt.
BORIS KONRAD: That's it-- the backside. Maybe you picture you just got up in the morning. You're a bit tired, maybe even a bit hung over. You go to the bathroom.
On the mirror you see, on the side of your backside, a freshly made tattoo. Not again! It's not any tattoo. On your backside, beautifully colored, painted, you see Peter Pan eating a hamburger. Peter Pan eating a hamburger.
And if you don't know Peter Pan-- you know Peter Pan, right? If you don't know, think of someone else called Peter, maybe someone you know or someone famous. I don't know-- Peter Jackson? But for me, it's Peter Pan, and he's eating a hamburger on my belly. Oh, on my backside. Sorry, on my backside.
Fifth location, already that's my belly. Maybe I hear a little roaring sound. I wonder, am I hungry? Is it time for lunch?
No, no, it's not my belly making the sound. There's a bear standing in front of me-- a bear, maybe a grizzly bear. And it takes its hands, its paw, tries to hit me. I step back. He only scratches me, leaving a red line on my belly-- for a bear and a line. Let's review the first five locations. With my feet, I was walking in the?
AUDIENCE: Moss.
BORIS KONRAD: Moss. And there was a cow standing there. On my knees sits a?
AUDIENCE: Queen.
BORIS KONRAD: Ringing a?
AUDIENCE: Bell.
BORIS KONRAD: My leg was really warm because there's a light?
AUDIENCE: Bulb.
BORIS KONRAD: Bulb, and a bull eats it. On the backside is a tattoo of?
AUDIENCE: Peter.
BORIS KONRAD: And burger. And at the belly, there was a?
AUDIENCE: Bear.
BORIS KONRAD: Leaving a line, scratching a line on my belly. So you see what's working well is all this weird images. So that's why it's working pretty well. Quite funny-- I don't know if anyone speaks German, but in German, we translate "weird" also as [GERMAN] which literally means worthy to be remembered. So something weird is worthy to be remembered in a couple of European languages, actually. So it's quite fun it's in there already. That's how it goes on.
Maybe feet, again-- on your chest, you feel little feet hitting your chest because there's maybe a miniature horse. Someone is mad, riding a miniature horse around your chest. And you feel the feet.
And you look down. Maybe look down, and you see-- what's that thing, here? Someone mad, riding around your chest. A little crazy image, so really try to picture it, really see it, and [INAUDIBLE] what's happening here.
What's the next location?
AUDIENCE: Shoulder.
BORIS KONRAD: Shoulder. So maybe you feel someone tapping you on the shoulder. And you're wondering, who is that? Who is sitting actually next to me, and who's tapping me on the shoulder? First, really picture feeling someone taps you on the shoulder. Maybe tap yourself on the shoulder, or your neighbor-- is that appropriate? I don't know.
So you feel someone tapping you on the shoulder. You turn your head, and you see next to you, actually, is the pope. So the pope is sitting next to you. And he already got some pizza. He maybe get some lunch already, some pizza. So the pope is tapping me on the shoulder. And I see him. Oh, and he's-- maybe, hi, mumbling on some pizza.
Next location?
AUDIENCE: Throat.
BORIS KONRAD: Throat. Throat. That's the throat. That's good. A little more difficult-- the words are key and chef. So, key to the throat. Maybe you feel someone taking a key and tickling you at your throat. Maybe you feel it's cold and tickly. Someone tickles you with a key. And you wonder who does.
And it's a chef, maybe of a local restaurant. He wants your appetite to rise, so he can sell you some food. But taking a key, tickles your throat, and it's a chef. We'll stay in the food scene. Next location?
AUDIENCE: Mouth.
BORIS KONRAD: Mouth. That's an easy one, again. The words are love and Eiffel Tower. How nice is that? So maybe for mouth, if I should picture something for love, of course, I'll think of a kiss. Maybe I give my wife a kiss. And how could it be more romantic than that?
Or maybe on top of the Eiffel Tower, which is in Paris, not Las Vegas, just to be clear. So on top of the Eiffel Tower, maybe I close my eyes, enjoy the moment, forget everything around me, not even realize how one of the many pickpockets steals my wallet. Ah, yes, how lovely.
When I open my eyes-- so tenth location was the eyes-- I see a book flying towards me-- a book. I get really angry because someone threw the book at me, obviously. And I should get this guy arrested who through the book at me-- for book and arrest. I open the eyes. A book flies toward me. And I shall get the guy arrested who through the book at me.
Let's review again. Fifth location was?
AUDIENCE: Belly.
BORIS KONRAD: Belly. And the words are?
AUDIENCE: Bear.
BORIS KONRAD: A bear.
AUDIENCE: And a line.
BORIS KONRAD: And a line. And then on the chest, you feel the?
AUDIENCE: Mad.
BORIS KONRAD: Mad.
AUDIENCE: Rider.
BORIS KONRAD: Rider. When someone taps you on the shoulder, it's a?
AUDIENCE: Pope.
BORIS KONRAD: Pope, eating?
AUDIENCE: Pizza.
BORIS KONRAD: And on my throat, I feel something tickling?
AUDIENCE: Key.
BORIS KONRAD: Key.
AUDIENCE: And a chef.
BORIS KONRAD: And the chef. And at the mouth, I have a kiss for?
AUDIENCE: Mouth.
BORIS KONRAD: Mouth and? Eiffel Tower. I open my eyes. I see the?
AUDIENCE: Book.
BORIS KONRAD: Book and?
AUDIENCE: Arrest.
BORIS KONRAD: Arrest. Can you take a piece of paper and try to write down the 20 words? So think of the locations, go with the locations. And do it digital, if you like, in the computer. Try to write down the 20 words if you can. How good did that work? Most people are nodding. OK.
Who has, let's say, 15 or more? 15 or more? Good? Nearly everyone. That's fantastic. Who has all of them? Who has all 20? Good job, fantastic.
In my studies, if I don't take the memory athletes for the control group, we normally invite students. Right? They're the cheapest. So they're pretty good at learning anyway. And if you give them a task to remember words in correct order, you have the court order just for free with this technique.
On average in such a test, I can do like 13, 14 words, if the order must be good. And so if you get more than 14 words, no, that's really exceptionally good. So that's quite important to notice and see how many had all 20 good. Who maybe had 18 or 19 good, who forgot maybe one location or a word or two? Christian, which word did you forget or which location?
AUDIENCE: Mouth.
BORIS KONRAD: Mouth, so I know where I forgot something. So it was love and Eiffel Tower. But I notice for mouth, I forgot what it was. At throat, it was key and chef. Mouth, I forgot it now. Maybe I didn't pay enough attention or whatever. Eyes-- oh, it was book and arrest.
So I know where I forgot something. That's really important because if you study, if you learn, normally, you do not have that. And with this technique, you do. That's really valuable because maybe, you know, we go, that's OK, I forgot that one. Maybe the image didn't work for me. I don't ever kiss anybody. I don't know. So you can come up with a different image.
Even if you use the technique, for example, to give a presentation-- maybe you have to lead a workshop or to give a little speech. This technique is so useful. And even if you use this technique, and you forgot one item, like, oh, I wanted to say something else. I don't know. But for the eyes, I know what else I want to talk about-- the book I wrote, whatever.
So you're not losing track anymore. You only lose one item. And if you study, you notice where you forgot something and can find it back. That's really, really useful, really valuable. So it's a really good technique on that.
As you saw, you have to-- correct order, even have it in reverse order, if you want. You can go to the eyes and start in the other direction. You even have pretty good access to individual items.
Like if I ask you, what was word number seven? You don't know it right away, but you can say, it's two words per location. So it must be the fourth location. So that's one, two, three-- it's the backside, so it's Peter. So you can find it back quite quickly. I don't know immediately which it is, but you can find exactly out on which location that word is. So these are all really big advantages of the method of loci.
OK, it was 20 random words-- quite fascinating. But can you use it for something useful? Well, I did hide some information in there. Like in the story beforehand, it was actually the taxonomy ranks. Any ideas what I did hide in here? Cities. Cities. Good job. Correct. Anyone else thinking about it, cities? Did you find it? Yes?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
BORIS KONRAD: Yes.
AUDIENCE: Where are the cities?
BORIS KONRAD: So--
AUDIENCE: Moss, cow-- Moscow. [INAUDIBLE]
BORIS KONRAD: Good one.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BORIS KONRAD: Well, what country is that? Congratulations. All of you just memorize the 10 biggest cities of Europe in correct order by number of inhabitants. OK, let's look at it together.
So help me out. So the biggest city of Europe will be?
AUDIENCE: Moscow.
BORIS KONRAD: Moscow, Moscow. Where does a queen live? Which city does she live in? Queen of England? London. And bell-- maybe many know bell, the biggest bell in the world, that's big Ben, is off in London. So the queen lives in London. It's not a keyword, but I use my prior knowledge.
The next one is a little mean. It's really mean, not just a little. It was bulb and bull. But I did say something. I said something about the bulb. What did I say it is?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BORIS KONRAD: Yeah, it's on. Very simple, it's on. The light bulb is on. Then there's a bull, so it's on bull-- Istanbul. If you only count the European for it, that will be your number three.
The rest is easier. Help me out.
AUDIENCE: Petersburg.
BORIS KONRAD: Petersburg, the Russian one.
AUDIENCE: Berlin.
BORIS KONRAD: Berlin, good one.
AUDIENCE: Madrid.
BORIS KONRAD: Madrid. Who does live here? Rome? Key chef-- Kiev. Kiev.
AUDIENCE: Paris.
BORIS KONRAD: Paris, and?
AUDIENCE: Bucharest.
BORIS KONRAD: Bucharest. That's the 10 largest metropolises of Europe in correct order by number of inhabitants, which you just memorized correctly. Well done. I don't know if you feel a little impressed. I thought also, given the current political state in the US, it might be useful information for you.
But what you see here is, OK, I have the words. I need to remember those. At first, I have in the locations, then I have the words-- hey, come in. And then I have to remember what it stands for.
So it seems maybe like even one more extra layer. But you know where to look. If I want to remember what's on the knee, I know where to look. I know where to get it back. It's what you call a retrieval structure in research, which makes it so useful to use this technique because you don't have to worry it's just lost somewhere in your memory. You know where to look-- really important.
And these words, some of the words I use, it's just like far-fetched like. Is, on, and bull, and you know it's Istanbul. So if you know something about the city, it's good enough to take that image, if you know maybe some famous site or whatever you associate with Istanbul. That's good enough.
But if you never heard the name before, you can still use the same technique. You can take book and arrest to remember Bucharest. So that shows how useful it is. You can name it in correct order, in reverse order, if you want. You can directly access all the different elements. So this technique is really useful for a lot of things, not just lists.
When I used it for being a student, I'd go back to the same technique. Like, I'd find keywords for the material I want to study, and I put these in locations. When I learned the deck of cards, we'll come to that when I talk about digits later on. When I use the deck of cards, of course, I use locations to put my images on-- same when I want to remember numbers. So this technique is really, really useful for a lot of things.
There are questions. So the question was, is there a rationale for why I use two words per location? There's no law or rule for that. So if I want to go really fast, often I only have one word per locations. It means I need a lot of locations, but I can be really fast.
If I wanted "for real" to remember the list of cities, probably for Paris, I would only have used Eiffel Tower. I would not need two words. To have also a good example for you, I made it two words, so it's consistent per item.
When I used the same technique being a student really following courses often I had way more information on a single location. Let's say I want to study biology. Then maybe a picture on my foot, there is a domain name written. And then it says king.com, and it says king. So you see where I'm going. I can link the whole set of information by combining stories and locations.
So that can be quite a lot, so it differs quite a bit. Now, when we want to be really fast, it's very little per location. When I want to study something well, like textbook material, facts, long-term knowledge, it might be way more. Exactly-- very good question, and I was hoping someone would ask it because it's exactly what I want to talk about now.
So I can use exactly the same technique for this deck of cards, which I don't care about tomorrow. So maybe I can show in a while that I still know it. Amy asked me in the break if I would still know the cards. And maybe I can just demonstrate later.
For sure, I still know the cards. So because I used the location, I still know them now. But I will not know them in a month because there's absolutely no use for me. I will shuffled them later, maybe, and that's gone. But I study useful information. And I want to know it in a week, a month, a year from now. And I'll use the same technique.
I have to do one more thing, though. There's one thing I have to do with the material if I want to remember, let's say, in a year. Would that be interesting, what else I have to do with it?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BORIS KONRAD: Yeah, you already got it. You have to repeat it. Yay. Yay. But it's the only way to help to get a really long-term memory over time. It's already a long-term memory, so correct me on that. But if I want to really remember it in a year, I have to repeat it. But-- and that's a really important but. I'll come to your question, Katie, later. It's a really important but.
There is, in my opinion, a few things at least many students, and even memory researchers, sometimes get wrong about it. So if I say here, you need to repeat it, I think you can do that really smart, and that it's much less work than you think. And to repeat something in a smart way, for me, means two different things.
The first thing is I don't repeat it by reviewing it, but by retrieving it. Let me say that again because it's really important. If you review something, it does pretty little to make the memory more durable. If you retrieve it from your own memory, the effect is much larger.
And since we're here at an academic institution, I want to prove it with a study. It's not my study. It's a work which originated way back, decades back, but in the last years has been studied a lot, for example, by Washington University in St. Louis. They did a whole range of studies, which you can look the papers up. But the typical design will be something like this.
You group volunteer students in different groups. And one group has only study blocks. And the other groups have some testing with it. So in a very simple study design, let's say they learn words. And then the study block just means you see the word pair on the screen for seven seconds per word pair. Iglesia-- church. Manzana-- apple. You just see it on the screen, seven seconds per word pair.
In one of those studies, where I'll show the results in the moment, they had, if I'm right, 28 word pairs-- 28 word pairs. So if this says study, it's all of the words. So this guy saw every word pair 4 times, 7 seconds per time, 28 seconds in total. So every word pair, in every study block, it's included.
If it says test, you just get tested on it. It can be verbal. It can be typing. For example, in this one, you have 6 seconds-- it says iglesia-- to come up with the answer. If you get the good answer-- oh, sorry. It's in German, now-- church. You see a correct mark for a second. And if you give a wrong answer, for one second, you see the actual translation. If you give no answer, the same thing-- for one second, you get the actual translation.
So this was the three groups. Again, because this guy, it was always the same-- four study blocks, every word pair, seven seconds, 28 seconds in total. This person, if you didn't get anything good any time, he would see 10 seconds max, right? So seven seconds in the study block, and then one second per test block as a correction.
So this guy, this one in the middle, had three study blocks and one test block. So then it's over, five-minute break for a toilet run and get some water, and then everyone gets tested on all word pairs. Which group does best?
Who thinks the first group? This group does best? Raise your hand if you think the first group does best? Who thinks the middle group does best? Who thinks the third group does best?
OK, I tricked you a little bit on this. The first group does best after five minutes. So after five minutes, the first group does best. And it makes sense. They saw it up to three times-- up to four times, three to four times longer, the information, than the other group. So after five minutes, the first group does best. So it's here 80%, 70%. So it is significant. It's not massive, but it's significant.
But of course, you were right. And I wouldn't tell the story if that's it. They come back a week later. We invite them back a week later and test their memory for the words again. And then it looks like this. That's a testing effect. It's not for five minutes. It's for over time.
This group forgot. It's not 0, here. It's broken. It's 40%. This group forgets half of the words they knew after a week. And this group hardly forgets any of the words. And that's the testing effect.
It takes a bit of your time, so maybe at the beginning, you can encode less. But you remember it well more over time. And this has been replicated over and over, also with way more complex material, not just with word pairs. And it's a really robust effect. So that's really important to note. Yeah, Robert?
AUDIENCE: Have you ever heard of the sensory, probably sensory room?
BORIS KONRAD: What do you mean? I'm not sure.
AUDIENCE: You know, in the beginning, you showed sensory memory.
BORIS KONRAD: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Is that what's possibly feeding into that a bit? I mean, the left graph.
BORIS KONRAD: Yeah. I don't think so. I think sensory memory is too fast, even for that. There's a five-minute break in between, so that shouldn't-- you don't see it back in your eye. I don't believe that's what's happening.
It's certainly more targeting what we still call the short-term memory. It's more like the [INAUDIBLE] which has changed here, more like a recognition memory. You can pop the words back now, but it didn't get really encoded, while the actual testing seems to change that
I mean, they still do a lot of research also in St. Louis, for example, to find the neurobiology behind it back. And we're not there yet. We don't know really what's exactly happening. Trying to investigate that-- it's not my research.
But we also have a group at Nijmegen studying that. And as I said here, in St. Louis, it's a pretty big team working on that. So that's the competing theories, what's actually happening. But the effect is really clear, for sure.
And if I now think back to the memory technique, the method of loci to the body list, it's perfect for that because you can just go through your list and check your items. If you ride your bike home, it costs so little effort, even while biking, you don't get into any dangerous situation, if you just check. Do you guys still know who sat on my knees? And which city was it that's a belly? You can just retrieve it for yourself easily. And that works really well to do that.
Then the question-- one moment, yeah-- is, how often do I need to do that? And there's, again, different things coming back into that. I claim if you do five repetitions on this material-- five, not more-- you will still know it in a year from now-- the whole list with all 10 cities-- if you do the repetitions in the right moment in time. That's important because the first repetitions you would need to do really soon.
First repetition I recommend after an hour-- one hour later, first repetition. Why so early, since you still know it? Well, exactly, otherwise, you couldn't retrieve it. And you still need to know it. So first repetition, an hour later. Let's say same day, at least.
Also, because-- maybe Martin-- for those of you who want to listen just to more of my address at, because sleep is so important for memory consolidation, if you retrieved it back the same day, again, we don't know exactly what's happening. But it seems to be marked to be better consolidated, to be better replayed during sleep. So same-day repetition, really importance.
Next repetition-- next day. Still very early, an hour a day. Then a week-- it gets longer already-- a month, half a year. An hour, a day, a week, a month, half a year. If you do these five repetitions, I'm confident you will know all 20 words and the 10 cities a year from now.
I admit, of course, it depends a little bit on what you're learning, right? So if you study something complex-- if you said, yeah, maybe I want to pick up Chinese learning again, if you want to remember the words for a year, probably you need more than five repetitions. Now, to remember my Chinese words, I needed to see them more than five times in a year. OK, I admit that.
The other way around, if your best friend tells you, hey, I'm pregnant, she doesn't need to repeat five times, right? So once is good enough. It does depend on--
AUDIENCE: The context?
BORIS KONRAD: It does depend on the context. But this is important. Yeah, you had a question. So for those who didn't understand, the question is like, how many different sets can I have on the same list at the same time? And I scripted this, because if this question wouldn't have come up, I would have said normally, someone asks this question because it's a really important question.
And your observation, your idea behind it, is true. It would be totally confusing. If I know, say, it worked so well. Lunch isn't here yet. Let's do 10 more cities. We go back to the feet.
Now, at the feet I have moss and cow. I can't easily put something else there, now. That would be confusing. It would be interfering, right? And this is totally true.
But I can still have different sets of information on the same location. And you said something very important at the end. You said at the same time. We cannot together reuse the body list now to remember 20 different words because this is really fresh now.
The set I use to remember playing cards, I cannot put other cards there now. That would be confusing. I wouldn't remember which card belongs to which set. But if I do my repetitions-- if you do the repetitions for the body list, maybe one, we do one together after lunch, you do one tomorrow in a week-- then a week or two from now, you can reuse the same locations, and it will not interfere anymore.
If I use this deck of playing cards, and I want to remember it over time, I review it today, tomorrow, in a week. I can use the same 52 locations I used for the cards to put other images on. It will not disturb it.
I will not do that because I don't need this deck of cards anymore again. So I will not review it. And I will still need to have to wait a week or two before I can reuse these locations.
But in a week or two, it would be pretty hard to remember the images. Maybe somewhere so striking out, that I will find them back, but I would really have to spend some effort. I won't do that. I can reuse the same locations, no problem, but not at the same time. So that's a really important point.
So if I want to remember more than I can remember right now, I need more locations. And that's what we are going to do after lunch. We will make a memory palace. There is this term coming back out of this room, and maybe a little bit surroundings, to have more locations because you cannot reuse the body list right now to store something else.
So let me summarize it again. I'll come to your question, Fred. If I want to remember for long-term, I need repetitions. And then after a little while, I can reuse the same locations because the images will not disturb itself anymore. On the body list alone, I have now-- [INAUDIBLE] but I'm sure seven or eight different lists I can retrieve just like this.
I just know, OK, I have this site of information. I have those 10 cities. I have also the-- is it Wonders of the World in English? I had seven-- because I sometimes use this as an example. But I also have like a to-do list from two days ago. I can retrieve them. It doesn't disturb because there was enough spacing, enough time in between.
If you do a to-do list, maybe you have to give a talk. You're invited to a seminar, to a workshop, you prepare a talk. You use this technique. It's brilliant for that-- absolutely perfect-- to give your talk without notes.
You gave the talk. You don't want to reuse the same talk again. It's not one you're going to give anywhere else again. You don't review it. And a week or two later, you can reuse the same locations.
Or you say, well, I'll be invited to another symposium in two months, where I give more or less the same talk. Then you do review it. And you can put images, again, on the same locations because they've gotten consolidated.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BORIS KONRAD: For this question, of course, you can argue about it. For me, what works really best for me and how I recommend it, but there's no science behind it. I'm not sure anyone's studied it. But my idea is I like to have 50 locations in one set of locations.
So what are we are going to do after lunch is to make a set of 50 locations around here. It sounds a lot now. Don't worry, it will be easy. 50 locations we'll make together.
But then I might like to make some more locations at the MIT. But then I would call it MIT 1, and then the other one is MIT 2. So like at the institute I work at now, I have four different sets of 50 locations in different parts of the campus. But there's always a set of 50 for me.
I have 50 locations in my apartment. I have 50 locations in the small room I lived in when I did a year abroad in London. I have 50 at the Times Square in New York, where I once went for a vacation, and then I spent half an hour to make a memory palace out of Times Square.
I have four different sets of 50 locations in London at the famous sites-- one at Buckingham Palace, one at the Thames-- but they're all separate. But there's always 50 because that feels like a good set for me. The Sherlock idea, of course, is to build on and on and on, and then you can go any direction. For me, it feels too confusing. I'd rather have separate sets.
Maybe to anticipate the question, in total, for the World Memory Championships, which is a three-day event-- Friday to Sunday, morning to evening. So I cannot reuse a single location. It's all too close up-- they are too close on each other. You say it like this? So it's yeah, too crammed in three days. On Sunday, I cannot reuse the location from Friday because I still have the images from Friday in there. So for the World Championships, I need something like 3,000 locations-- so 60 times 50 locations.
What I could now use in my head is, I'll say, maybe 80 sets-- like 4,000? Maybe a little more I have right now. I can just come back to it and say, OK, today I use Times Square. Today use London 1. Today, I use MIT 2. I can go back to these. I have like 80 at hand right now.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
BORIS KONRAD: Yeah, one thing. Now, many think, well, that's already fascinating that he can remember all these locations. And that's not true because all of you have all these locations in your mind because you've traveled through different places. You've just never spent 10 minutes saying that's one, two, three, four, five, six. But you have all these locations in your mind.
Have you ever been to Times Square in New York? Who has been there? Now picture it. How was it there? I don't know all the details, but you have quite a lot of images in your mind and locations. And you went to, I don't know, whatever-- some shops there, some restaurant. Maybe you watched a musical.
You have all these locations, you just never labeled them. If you just spend a few minutes labeling them while you're there, or even in your memory, suddenly, it's a memory palace. You have these locations in there. It's nothing special about me to remember these locations. So Robert has a comment, or?
AUDIENCE: I'll just make a comment that this primacy of spatial memory exists even in the animal kingdom because squirrels, for example, when they hibernate, they bury 100 nuts. And they've done studies. And the squirrels recognized 90% of the nuts. So they recognized 90% spatial locations [INAUDIBLE] So there's obviously some reason why spatial memory is natural and [INAUDIBLE]
BORIS KONRAD: Yeah, in 2014 there was a Nobel Prize for physiology for place cells, right? Place cells and grid cells, which probably has a lot to do with that. So at the symposium Robert also was in Berlin, we had the director of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, who is one who found grid cells in humans and that sort of work in that. And he has a whole postdoc with PhD students, just working on the idea how the same mapping thing is also used to map cognitive knowledge-- to map knowledge-- and presented it there. And it goes back to the same thing. Yep.
So these names don't have any order because it's random. You met one person at 8:00 and another at 10:00. The question was, how can you systemize using this idea because you don't know in advance over the day in real life when there's information coming in you want to remember.
But I still follow my memory palace in order. The order maybe doesn't make sense because it's random if I first met Barton and then Charlene or not. But I can still put it on locations. And then this is what would be my system for as the day, kind of-- that I'd choose this memory palace I used today and put the information on there.
But then again, if I was a student, I would pre-define a whole set of locations for a course. Like if I followed a course, a specific course-- I studied physics and computer science first, and did a master's in both, and then did my PhD later in neuroscience. For a course, I predefined a set of locations. And then when the professor, whoever gave the course, had the slides, I would use one location as one slide, usually. And then at the end of the course, even if it's over a few months, I would know for every slide-- maybe not all the details, not everything that was on there, but at least one or two or three keywords which I put on the locations.
And then when I now read information about it, I can see maybe, OK, there was a list in there or an algorithm. And I should really know that one. I can memorize that on top somewhere else. But I had the whole structure of the course in my mind-- everything that was presented.
And when I now read about it, I know where am I? OK, I'm step 80 of 300 for that course. So I have a cognitive map for all this material. I can just pluck information in there if I need it.
So for this on-the-fly knowledge you described, I usually have, for the day, a set of locations I could just rotate through. Just, actually, not that many-- it's not that much that comes through a day like this. And for planned learning, like being a student, I prepare it.
Like when I go to a scientific conference now, I usually also prepare on the way there which location I want to use. And then in all the talks, for every two minutes, I just make one image. I will not remember all the talks verbally. But for every single talk, for two minutes per talk, I have one image. And for every single poster I visit, I remember the name of the person presenting the poster, which university it's from, and then the main finding-- kind of the headline. So afterwards, I know all the posters I've looked at.
And then on the way home, I will think about it and realize, of course, 80% was not relevant for what I do. And I will not repeat those. But those I think, well, this is really something I should follow up on, I will then review. Or still, of course, make notes-- of course, I still make notes and use my tools I have for that.
The question was a system for repeating. I want to talk about some tools at the very end. Also, if you want to go on, if you want to train your memory with techniques, I'll show you some tool towards that and show you some nice web pages.
For repeating, there is coming up a tool which is open-source and free for computer, Mac, and so on. And if you want have a mobile app, they charge for that. And it's called Anki. It's like the first name Anke, just with an i at the end, not an e. So that's their web page-- Anki.
And this helps you to remember you went to repeat something. Like for example, language learning, like my Chinese repetitions, I use this tool. It has a pretty smart algorithm behind it, so it's not my like five steps. One size fits all isn't true.
So this one, when you remember something, you have to grade yourself, how well did I remember it? Was it easy or hard? Or did I forget it? And then it calculates when you see it again, so a pretty smart thing. Some good science behind it. So I use that one for that purpose. And it was Katie first.
AUDIENCE: OK. For all these [COUGH] memory narratives that are stickier, that make a story stick better?
BORIS KONRAD: Yup.
AUDIENCE: Presumably-- you mentioned physical sensation in a lot of little stories that you were telling us. You mentioned characters and action. What qualities should we be trying to pack into these visuals?
BORIS KONRAD: Yeah, it's hard to say which quality to pack in those things. It might differ a little bit. It's just to enrich it, to just do different ones. And maybe I could do it more systematically, to target this question again, than I do.
But when something has a sound for me, I put in the sound. Like if it's pope and pizza, I also hear him mumbling on it. But if it's not, I don't force it in there. If I have two words that are just an image, and no character, I don't always force a character in there.
But I try usually to enrich it, to have more than one modality. But I don't do that very systematically. Maybe I should. I don't know. Yeah, Alexandra?
AUDIENCE: You kind of answered a little bit of the question that I had. But if you have more than, say, three or four locations, with some [INAUDIBLE] and key words, do you repeat what location has the story? How do you memorize, if you have 50 locations, which one you use to retrieve which content?
BORIS KONRAD: Yeah, now, if I think of the content, I know what my keyword image is. And then I know actually in which location it is. And then I can jump there and go through the next locations.
It will be a little more clear, I hope, after lunch when we do it together to really set up a memory palace here. I always don't just have 50. Within the 50, I can have groups of 10. So I can really go group by group. It sounds weird. It will be obvious. It's just natural-- just no problem at all.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] to remember weeks [INAUDIBLE]
BORIS KONRAD: You will see that no, it's not true, because that's what our brain is so good at. We will do it, and you will notice this is not true, what you just said. You don't forget which room is where. It's no problem at all. And then you just find it back there. So I can jump at the beginning of a topic. And then I know it's on the next location there.
And if a topic repeats throughout a course-- say it's a course of three months, it was 14 times a lecture of an hour or two, and the same concept came back a few times-- I make sure I always use the same image for that concept. And then I know, OK, I have the concept one time on my knees and one time on the shelf and one time in the kitchen. And it's even linked, without me needing to do much about it. Robert?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] a problem regarding the question of when [INAUDIBLE] information is stickiest, I would argue you have narrative, spatial, somatic-- narrative, spatial, somatic-- autobiographical, and video. Those are categories where you have pre-existing schema which allow you to immediately form associations where they might not otherwise exist. [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: Yeah, in fact, for that, there are several-- forget the neuroscience part. There are several anthropological studies which are quite striking in terms of the actual capacity for people to [INAUDIBLE] illustrate [INAUDIBLE] uneducated, but actually remember copious amounts of information.
So there was this famous study that was actually done on the Aborigines of Australia. And they have these 10,000 stories that their elders [INAUDIBLE] individual, whatever it tells. And these stories are based on landmarks of like their 100-kilometer journey stretches along the road.
And every point there, the stone means something. So they have a narrative for that stone. And after that, they go to some other place. So they have this 100-kilometer-odd journey, where they have 10,000 such stories on one side.
And there's another one which was actually done in the 1920s and '30s that the great [INAUDIBLE], who was in Harvard, was a folklorist. He was trying to collect the original stories of The Iliad or Odyssey and all that stuff. He assumed that the Iliad and Odyssey were actually written in books and all that stuff, but it's actually more or less word of mouth. And it is a folklore.
So he was in search of those folklorists. And the people he found were people in the Slavic countries-- Yugoslavia. And all the people who were able to tell those stories or sing those songs of those stories were almost all invariably illiterate. And so [INAUDIBLE] had this beautiful quote saying, like, what is the greatest way for someone's memory to be removed? Give them an education.
So there is a lot of anthropological aspects of this, where they actually talk about developments of narrative especially. And what emotional ingredients that a [INAUDIBLE] might have or [INAUDIBLE] or the associations that they [INAUDIBLE]. So it's kind of like a sea of information that always seems to exist for them. And they're able to recall whatever songs or stories.
AUDIENCE: And in that same article, what was the book that [INAUDIBLE] men decided to [INAUDIBLE] that they memorized in India?
AUDIENCE: So that's another epic theme of, again, uneducated or illiterate bards moving around the country. [INAUDIBLE] They go around telling these stories which last over a week. Every night for like eight hours, these guys sing songs about this epic poem that is like 15 times the size of the Bible, or something.
And these guys can [INAUDIBLE] a single [INAUDIBLE] But then they put aside the entire whatever-- 60,000-line canto or poem or whatever that is-- without any interference in their memory. And they're able to do it perfectly well. And someone actually [INAUDIBLE] and others were not. And they were like, except for some dialects and all that stuff. [INAUDIBLE] sing with an accent or something. This person was [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: I think [INAUDIBLE] or anyone could know? Like, everyone has his own idea, or [INAUDIBLE] or like every single person [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: I think it is more the case that there is some kind of a system in place because this is usually the end [INAUDIBLE] younger people remember it or something like that. That's usually how it is. So they pick it up as an indication of a lesson, in that sense.
So it's not like you know [INAUDIBLE] coming up with [INAUDIBLE] all the time. But that's also useful, I guess. But then it also is [INAUDIBLE] structure [INAUDIBLE] So I don't know the exact answer. [INAUDIBLE] more [INAUDIBLE]
BORIS KONRAD: Yeah, right. Interesting observations.